The premise is this: Why struggle to do something when you can simply make it automatic?

The basic steps of habit formation are to choose a trigger, associate it with a behavior, and reward yourself for doing the behavior. For example, if you want to exercise more often, you could put your sneakers in the kitchen cabinet next to your cereal. This will remind you to go for a run before breakfast, even as your tired self is starting to reach for the Cheerios. After your run, reward yourself with your favorite coffee on the way home. Repeat often enough, and voila, a habit is born. Exercise will soon become automatic.

If you're laughing, I don't blame you. If only it were that easy to change what we do.

Unfortunately, we aren't so easily programmed (or deprogrammed). Even if it were simple to build new habits, it doesn't guarantee that they will replace destructive habits. The process of overcoming a bad habit typically requires a lot more than building a positive new habit. You need skills for tolerating distress, cravings, anxiety, and discomfort. You need self-compassion for setbacks. You need social support or role models. You need a certain amount of mindfulness and motivation to recognize when you might be acting in ways counter to your goals -- and recognize new, unplanned opportunities to make progress on your goals. And yes, you will need some willpower for when you are most overwhelmed by desire, stress, anxiety, boredom, or self-doubt.

I recently gave a talk on this problem to a Habit Formation group. It's called "Are You Sure You Want a Habit?", and you can watch it below. In it, I describe the main ways habit formation fails, especially when it comes to what I call "really freakin' hard changes" like addiction, weight loss, or overcoming anxiety-based procrastination.

I'm reading the Willpower Instinct and setting my willpower challenge and curious about how to frame the challenge. Ultimately, my goal is health and weight related. I "want" to loose 20 pounds, exercise daily and eat a healthy diet.

In chapter one, you talk about challenges from the perspective of "I will" power challenges, "I won't" power challenges, and "I want" power challenges. It seems to me that the same challenge could be framed in all three ways. Take my challenge for example. "I won't" eat sugary and fattening foods. "I will" eat a healthier diet. Or "I want" to lose 20 pounds.

I'm wondering which of the framing techniques sets us up with a higher likelihood for success. Are you more likely to achieve you goal when you an aspiration with an "I want" or "I will"? Or is it better to focus on the change with an "I won't".

I'm a big fan of capitalizing on social support, learning to integrate self-acceptance with self-directed change, using mindfulness to notice things, and engaging willpower in those rare times when other behavior change tools haven't helped.

But I'm puzzled why you point out that adding a new, good habit doesn't AUTOMATICALLY end an old, undesired habit. That's apparent -- it's obvious that training oneself to exercise every morning at sunrise wouldn't stop binge eating after work because the binge eating isn't triggered by sunrise.

Still, even though new habits don't automatically displace old ones, they can be designed to do that, and I'm surprised that you didn't point this out.

I'll give an example of habit-substitution from CBT. Suppose a moderately depressed man tends to lie in bed and ruminate on negative thoughts and feelings. This happens whenever he thinks he's been rejected. His therapist knows that he formerly enjoyed exercising and he's recently shown interest in returning to her old workout routine.

As you correctly pointed out, developing the habit of exercising at some specific time of the day would do little to stop his rumination behavior. But what if the therapist advises him to exercise every time he feels rejected? That's the strategy for using a new habit to get rid of an old one: use the old trigger to initiate a new behavior, one that's incompatible with the old behavior. (Ever ruminated on the elliptical machine? Me neither.)

Actually, this isn't a made-up story, it's mine. The end of the story? Perceived rejection is now my reminder to exercise, or do laundry, or do a CBT worksheet, or cook a meal. The strategy works; I don't ruminate anymore.

Later, a similar strategy handled anxiety -- tense muscles and racing thoughts are a reminder to establish mindfulness, let go of the tension, and take a few deep breaths.

The point? New habits CAN stop old ones. Combining well-engineered habit formation with mindfulness and positive reinforcement decreases the amount of willpower needed to succeed.

One of your best talks. In the belly of the beast! In an interesting way I found your challenge to conventional assumptions about habit to really help illuminate and differentiate mindfulness and awareness. I kept finding myself thinking, "Of course! That totally makes sense now!"

I especially liked the final question (which was hard to hear) about goal/path/purpose. Rather an amazing way to end an amazing discussion.